Sweltering heat expected to ease, bring relief to Southland

Jamie Jones, on the left, throws a ball to his son Jai in the Belmont Shore… (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles…)

Sweltering temperatures are expected to persist throughout much of Southern California on Saturday, but weather forecasters predicted a cooling trend would begin Sunday.

"The good news is that the heat wave, if you want to call it that, is breaking," said John Dumas, meteorologist for the National Weather Service. "The bad news is that it's not breaking very much, and temperatures are going to start going up again on Wednesday."

On Saturday, most of the valley and foothill areas in Los Angeles and Ventura counties were expected to have highs between 95 and 103 degrees. Even overnight, temperatures might not drop below 80 degrees in the foothills.

High temperatures for the warmest areas of the coastal plain were expected to be in the mid 80s and mid 90s throughout the weekend. And downtown Los Angeles was expected to top out at 90 degrees.

In Long Beach, temperatures reached a record 98 degrees on Friday.

Still, Dumas said the heat is relatively normal for Southern California this time of year.

"This seems so hot partly because we were running a couple degrees below normal for most of July," he said.